


then burn the ashes

by morganya



Category: Bandom
Genre: Consensual Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-10
Updated: 2013-04-10
Packaged: 2017-12-08 01:34:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/755455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/morganya/pseuds/morganya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pete and Patrick get back together. They say it's just to write.</p>
            </blockquote>





	then burn the ashes

Patrick makes the first move. It's the last thing Pete expects. He opens up his email thinking it's just going to be the usual messages from producers and editors, and then there's Patrick's email with Hey Wentz as the subject line.

He doesn't know whether or not to open it. He puts the laptop down, stands up and walks around it twice before looking back at the screen. The email's still there.

He's not sure what to do here. He's resigned himself to being out of Patrick's sphere; occasionally he hopes that when Patrick and Elisa start having babies that he'll be a part of the repertoire of when I was your age stories, but he hasn't let himself think of anything further than that. It's been long enough that he can almost look back with nostalgia rather than regret.

It takes twenty minutes and ten false starts before he can psych himself up enough to actually open the email. He doesn't even know why he's afraid to do it, other than he's thinking Patrick's going to let him know what a selfish bastard he is.

The email reads differently than he thought it would. It says _Hey, it's been a while. I wondered if you might want to kick around some music with me. Just to see if we can._

_I know this is abrupt but I've stopped and started over about fifty times now._

He has to restrain his first impulse to immediately write back, _just tell me when you want me to be there and ill do it_. That just comes off as creepy, like he's been standing outside Patrick's house in the bushes, waiting. He's been trying to work on not being creepy.

The last time he saw Patrick was at the wedding, where he barely had time to introduce Meagan and say congratulations. The last thing he wanted to do was to talk about music when Patrick was beaming at his brand new wife. It had the potential to get ugly.

He's spent a good quarter of his life with Patrick's voice singing his songs, and a few years without. He might have changed for the better over the past few years. Or gotten worse. He's not the best judge.

He steps away from the computer. He wants to give himself time to answer honestly. He hopes Patrick can understand that.

He interrupts Bronx' cartoon watching to get himself a dogwalking partner, then takes his kid and Bear for a walk. Afterwards, he sends Bronx to wash up while he makes dinner. Meagan comes home while he's stirring the vegetables; she leans around him to peck him on the cheek, fifties sitcom-style, and then Bronx comes barreling in before Pete can even think about grownup things like songs and old partners. Meagan corrals Bronx into helping her set the table before Pete serves everyone. Bronx balks at the cooked carrots but deigns to eat all his bell peppers, which is about as much as Pete can hope for.

After dinner, he gives Bronx a bath, and then it's storytime and then bedtime. Pete sits and watches his kid sleep for a minute. Then he gets up and goes back downstairs. Meagan is whistling as she puts clean dishes in the cupboards.

"Patrick Stump emailed me today," Pete says. "He wants to work on some songs with me."

Meagan stops for a split second, then very deliberately puts a plate away and shuts the cupboard door. "Is that good or bad?"

"I don't know," Pete says. "It just…kind of is?"

He's talked about the band with her before, obliquely; when things didn't work out with Bebe, he's sure he did some snarling about lead singers that probably wasn't fair either to Patrick or to Bebe. At Patrick's wedding, she and Elisa had exchanged knowing glances. Pete had the feeling that Meagan wasn't quite sure what to think of Patrick, just as Elisa's never really known what to think about him.

Otherwise, Meagan keeps her conclusions to herself.

"Ever really hung out with a genius, babe?" he asks.

"Only a couple hundred times," she says. "Everyone's a genius in fashion."

"So you know what it's like."

"Impossible to work with?"

"Well, no. Well, yeah, sometimes. But other times, it wasn't work at all. It was like breathing, how we worked together. And sometimes it was fucking awful and sometimes it was the greatest time ever."

She's quiet for a long time before she says anything else. "But you stopped working together."

He doesn't say anything for a while either. "Yeah," he says finally. "But that wasn't my choice."

She turns away, opens up the cupboard and rearranges things that were already in place. When she turns back, her voice is bright and brittle. "So what's the choice now?"

He still feels like he's leaving a lot of things out, but he says, "The one you're happy with."

"This isn't something I can be responsible for. If I say don't do it when you want to go back to him, then you'll sit up at night and think what a bitch I am, and I don't want that."

"It's not like that."

"I can't _be_ your conscience, Pete."

"I know." He wishes he had a pair of sunglasses to play with, or a pen, or something. "I know, I know. I just don't want you to be unhappy."

"Do you want to go back?"

"Yeah," he says. "But only for work. It's just songs, babe."

"So if everything works out there, you think you'll still want to be my one and only?"

She's trying to make a joke, but it sounds wrong. He pretends he doesn't notice. He says, "Always."

She looks at him for a long time. She could say a lot of things to him right now, he knows it. Instead she says huskily, "Get over here," and he obeys. She wraps her endless legs around him and they fuck up against the kitchen counter, hard and fast so they don't worry about waking up the kid.

He comes first. He moves to finish her off, but before he can drop to his knees, she grabs him by the hair and says, "Promise me."

"What?" he asks. His hands are on her thighs, fingers reaching for her hips.

"When you see him," she says, "look, I don't want to hear about it, okay? Good, bad, whatever. Pretend he doesn't exist when it comes to you and me, okay?"

It's only a small promise, on the surface. He nods. She shudders and lets her breath out when he tastes her.

Later that night, when Meagan's murmuring in her sleep and he's sure he won't wake her, he slips out of bed and sends Patrick an email, _just tell me when and ill see what I can do_.

*****

He'd vaguely thought that he would be going to Patrick's house to write, but it's probably for the best that Patrick sets up studio time at some grimy, anonymous studio downtown. Pete drops Bronx off at Ashlee's place for the weekend and then drives around in a circle, resolutely thinking about how things will be different from now on.

When Pete arrives, Patrick looks the same as he did the last time, however long it was ago. He's set up in the studio, a barricade of equipment around him, hat pulled over his glasses. He looks up when Pete opens the door, shading his eyes, and Pete sees the light reflect on his ring.

It takes a second, but they hug, and Pete doesn't know who initiates it. He hopes it wasn't him. "Been a while, Wentz," Patrick says, with a little wry smile, and Pete feels a whole lot younger.

They make small talk like they're meeting at a cocktail party somewhere. He asks about Elisa, fills Patrick in on Bronx' latest accomplishments and how Meagan and Ashlee are. It's all very polite and impersonal.

"Been working on anything?" Patrick asks finally.

Maybe it would be more romantic, more cinematic, if he had come with nothing; then they would sit down and make beautiful music together. But he hasn't come with nothing. He's got scraps that he's been turning over, some more formed than others. Maybe that should be comforting, that he didn't stop working when everything else in his life fell apart.

He says, "A few things. Want to take a look?"

"Whenever you're ready," Patrick says.

Pete doesn't get home until late. They hadn't done much more than sort through their collected scraps and try to determine what they could expand on. They have years worth of lyric fragments and chord collections between them. He thinks they've got it narrowed down, but he isn't making himself any promises.

He sleeps on the couch to avoid waking Meagan.

*****

They talk to each other in code, the same one they've used since the very beginning. It's a mix of references and eye movements and musical notes, and if Pete steps back to think about it, he knows it seems impenetrable to anyone who isn't them. He only thinks about it once the work slows or stops altogether.

It's the same thing they've always done, even though they're both older and thinner and more hardened. Patrick's as focused as ever when they're working, but this time around it seems to carry over when they stop for coffee. Pete's used to being the live wire, the one who can attract the most attention even when he doesn't want it – now that he's had to let most of that go, he can see how much less scattered and thoughtful Patrick's become. He doesn't mention it, for fear of going somewhere Patrick isn't ready for, but Patrick preempts the question when Pete comes back from the Starbucks run. He takes the cup Pete hands him and says, "I wish I'd thought about going on Adderall a million years ago."

"I could have told you about that," Pete says. "I could have told you a bunch of things."

"Yeah, I guess you're right," Patrick says.

*****

The studio time ends on Monday morning. They have what could be five songs, a number of bridges, four instrumentals. They haven't discussed what to do with the five songs, who will get them when the time is up. The songs aren't all Patrick and they're not all him and Pete's not sure how they're going to talk about using them or scrapping them all. Maybe this will just be their lost weekend. It's not the first one Pete's had.

They haven't talked about the implications of the lyrics, and he's glad for that. He's sure some of them refer to Ashlee and some to Meagan and some to Bronx. Some he knows are about the band. He hopes he managed to cloak them in enough metaphor that no one else will know about them.

He's been being good and not talking to Meagan about what they've worked on. He isn't sure what Patrick's doing with Elisa. Patrick and Elisa used to have the kind of relationship that Pete wanted when he was twenty-two, full of epic fights and grand romantic gestures and unspoken loyalty. He knows how relationships can change, though.

*****

It happens late on Sunday. They've made the possibly stupid decision to keep going through the night, to see if something brilliant will come together before they have to leave. Nothing brilliant is coming together.

"We've got until seven and it's already midnight," Pete finally snaps when Patrick's diddling with the same two chords that were already shitty to begin with. "You want to stop jerking off and just get something done?"

It's way too harsh and he knows it, but he can't stop himself. Patrick's mouth tightens, but instead of rising to the bait he says, "You're the one who was pushing for these. I can just as soon stop as keep going."

"They sucked to begin with," Pete says. "You know it and I know it. We should have tossed them out and I wish you'd said something."

"Don't pin this on me, dude."

"What? Look, I don't know if you just don't want to speak your mind around me –"

"When the hell have I _ever_ done that?" Patrick says. His neck is flushed. "I always tell you what I think."

"Well, you didn't this time."

"You're picking a fight about two fucking chords? I was trying to actually work, and you're sitting there acting like I'm a goddamned psychic who knows what you think all the time. What the fuck."

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh, bullshit. Just because you can't come out and say what you think doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same."

"I'm trying to do right by the songs, asshole. I don't want this to be over and you just pack up and walk away and leave me with nothing."

"I never said I'd do that!"

"Well, what am I supposed to think, Patrick? You never said if you were just doing this to make me happy or if you actually wanted to write something good."

"Not everything is about _you_ , Wentz. I'd have thought you'd have learned that after you lost a couple bands."

It hits like a bodyblow. Pete doesn't know what to say for a minute. The flush on Patrick's neck has gone up to his face.

"Fuck you," Pete says. "Fuck you, asshole. In case you forgot, you and Trohman were the ones who walked out on us. And I fuckin' let you. I let you walk away."

"And what about the rest of it? Did something happen with the other band so you took your toys and went home, or did you just get bored?"

"I could ask you the same thing. Did not everyone love you like you wanted them to? Did you go out in the big world and then you couldn't make it? Did you become just another hack studio musician who can't get a job –"

Patrick throws a punch. Pete staggers back, his ears ringing. "You little fucker," he says, and hurls himself across the room.

They go down in a crash of equipment, snarling and cursing. Patrick has a hand around Pete's throat and the other flailing behind him for his glasses, and Pete's scratching and kicking because that's what he tends to default to. Patrick smells like sweat and aftershave.

Pete wants to kill the little bastard until he doesn't anymore. He's in the middle of trying to claw the veins out of Patrick's arm, and then he just runs out of steam. He feels ridiculous and guilty.

He goes limp, and what's surprising is that Patrick does too. He flops down next to Pete and they stare up at the ceiling together for a while.

"Just like old times," Patrick says quietly.

"Just like old times," he says. "Sorry about that."

"I do actually miss you, you asshole," Patrick says.

"I do too," he says. "I don't know if that's enough."

"I don't know if you want to do this for the songs, or if we can just –"

"I don't want to say what we can do," he says. "Not yet."

Patrick reaches for him, and he grabs on and holds tight. It's not cinematic and it's not even romantic, but his life tends to go better when he's not looking for either of those. He comes with his clothes still on, pressed against Patrick's thigh on the floor of the studio in a mess of equipment, and he jacks Patrick off before either of them think of anything else.

"What're we going to do now, Wentz?" Patrick says. "I guess I was hoping I'd get here and find out we didn't work together anymore. I don't think that happened."

"Me neither," he says. "I didn't know it would work. Meagan thought different."

"So did Elisa," Patrick admits. "We fought about this for a long time before I emailed you."

"What'd you wind up doing?"

"She said yes, she just didn't want to know anything about it."

"So did Meagan."

"We can't just do things like before. I mean, we can't. Things are meant to be different."

"I can work with different."

"How?"

"I don't know yet. But I think we can work something out."

*****

Monday morning comes and goes. He picks Bronx up from Ashlee's place and they come home in time to catch Meagan running out the door, on the verge of being late for work. He kisses her hello and goodbye and says, "See you tonight," as she runs to the car. Bronx goes up to his room to play and he gets a second to check his email before he thinks about making lunch.

He gets another email from Patrick, the subject line reading Hey Wentz. Inside it says, _Want to talk about where to go from here? Still miss you._

He writes back, _Let's talk about it. without you i'm not right._

He closes the laptop and gets up, walking into his life, whatever it might hold.


End file.
